Packs of wolves

assault, rend, and asunder!
Each lyrical beast
is named for a poet
but Punch knows
the power of names
and pummels surrealism!
Were this Russian, survival
would be different; today,
Punch fights elsewhere.
What? Where? Than can’t
be said.
Wolves have no meaning—
yet even signifiers
bite. He whittles
a flute.

Tarkovsky

Way back in '02 I first saw Solaris directed by Andrei Tarkovsky. I watched it three times in two days and was astounded, moved, and challenged (it also helped that Natalya Bondarchuk is absolutely stunning in her role of Hari). The film was poetry. It was patient, and challenging, and rewarding--I built a relationship with that film, and still I see elements of it reverberating in my creative work and the way I watch movies. As I recall, I was reading some Gertrude Stein at the time, and I recall musing that a very Steinian idea of insistence was also present in Tarkovsky's cinematic adaptation of Staislaw Lem's sci fi classic.

Since that film, I hold Tarkovsky as one of the great directors of the 20th century. How happy was I, then, when today what found its way into my hands but Tarkovsky edited by Nathan Dunne. This hefty book is full of gorgeous clips and photos, and includes 24 essays in the following categories: Russia and Religion, Art and Nature, Music and Modernity, Memory and Awakening from 20 contributors.

Reading this is going to take me a while, but hey school is almost out for the summer, and I've got time, time, time to read, write, and watch movies.

I wrote a long poem about that film right after watching it, so I'll include just its beginning as the poem still makes me happy:

Begin with a telescoping, a
house from memory. Long drive through color.
Slip into monochromatic. There was
a child and a sea. Disbelief, old leather.
The children were scampering, and a photo
was burning with twigs and recollection.
I am a guest.

...

Mirrors filled this place.
Chris was electricity,
deluge. His jacket,
blue and worn. He wore that
jacket well.

...

Spirals and mirrors
capture the sound of bells.
They were lost at a sea.
Where was Hari, where was
“Chris I have a feeling.”
These resurrections were always.
A feeling of rockets, of deception
and duplicate shawls.
Tide pools.

Cow-human hybrids...

So cows have finally been merged with man. Whoa! And these cow-man embryos lived for three days!

The article states:

The embryos survived for three days and are intended to provide a limitless supply of stem cells to develop therapies for diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and spinal cord injuries, overcoming a worldwide shortfall in human embryos.

This is really incredible and I am impressed and grateful. The Catholic Church may cry "monstrous" but dying from Alzheimer's is monstrous, too, and so is not exploring a potential development that could alleviate or cure its worst effects (Alzheimer's, not Catholicicsm's).

With this news, though, I cannot help but recall a lovely poetic fable I read years ago:

"The Sheep Child"
By James Dickey

Farm boys wild to couple
With anything with soft-wooded trees
With mounds of earth mounds
Of pine straw will keep themselves off
Animals by legends of their own:
In the hay-tunnel dark
And dung of barns, they will
Say I have heard tell

That in a museum in Atlanta
Way back in a corner somewhere
There's this thing that's only half
Sheep like a woolly baby
Pickled in alcohol because
Those things can't live his eyes
Are open but you can't stand to look
I heard from somebody who ...

But this is now almost all
Gone. The boys have taken
Their own true wives in the city,
The sheep are safe in the west hill
Pasture but we who were born there
Still are not sure. Are we,
Because we remember, remembered
In the terrible dust of museums?
Merely with his eyes, the sheep-child may
Be saying saying

I am here, in my father's house.
I who am half of your world, came deeply
To my mother in the long grass
Of the west pasture, where she stood like moonlight
Listening for foxes. It was something like love
From another world that seized her
From behind, and she gave, not Iifting her head
Out of dew, without ever looking, her best
Self to that great need. Turned loose, she dipped her face
Farther into the chill of the earth, and in a sound
Of sobbing of something stumbling
Away, began, as she must do,
To carry me. I woke, dying,

In the summer sun of the hillside, with my eyes
Far more than human. I saw for a blazing moment
The great grassy world from both sides,
Man and beast in the round of their need,
And the hill wind stirred in my wool,
My hoof and my hand clasped each other,
I ate my one meal
Of milk, and died
Staring. From dark grass I came straight

To my father's house, whose dust
Whirls up in the halls for no reason
When no one comes piling deep in a hellish mild corner,
And, through my immortal waters,
I meet the sun's grains eye
To eye, and they fail at my closet of glass.
Dead, I am most surely living
In the minds of farm boys: I am he who drives
Them like wolves from the hound bitch and calf
And from the chaste ewe in the wind.
They go into woods into bean fields they go
Deep into their known right hands. Dreaming of me,
They groan they wait they suffer
Themselves, they marry, they raise their kind.

Poetry Tonight!

So...I'll be reading poems tonight with some friends!

Poetry at Book Zoo

Back Room Live
Release Party
Fri. 4/25 7PM

Trevor Calvert
Challen Clarke
Zach Demby
Eleanor Johnson
Blake Ellington Larson
Sarah Garrigan

Book Zoo is located at:
6395 Telegraph Ave
(between Alcatraz Ave & North St)
Oakland, CA 94609
(510) 654-2665

For a sample of what you may hear, check out a recording of one of my poems at www.weirddeer.com

Fashion and Illustration

So I was over at saudade's blog and I read her fantastic post about fashion and superheroes. Later, I opened up a copy of Juxtapoz and what advert did I see? James Jean doing work for Prada.



Check out the NYT article, or read more on NotCot.



http://www.jamesjean.com/

Pretty and awesome (check out the illustrated bags--they're terrific).

Why I like Indie Bookstores

My pal Saudade brought this terrific article about independent bookstores by John King at the SF Chronicle to my attention. Anyone who knows me knows that for the last few years I have worked at Diesel, A Bookstore, and I have learned a lot about the business, the challenges, and the ethos that drives a lot of professional book-sellers. I was told during my interview that the owners and workers at Diesel view it as an intellectual commons--a place where thinkers-of-all types could rub shoulders with mystery novelists, environmental activists, and graphic novel aficionados. So far that has often proved true. Diesel is always interesting.

King writes of indie bookstores:

a good bookstore is like a good city block: varied and rich, with layers that bear evidence of imagination and pride. There's a tactile connection to the ephemeral world of ideas. This is merchandise, but it's not something to be worn for a season or hung up on a wall; it's something to be discussed and shared, maybe even something that will shape your thoughts and actions. There's more going on than the creation of a scene. It's the slow formation of identities, of thoughts and passions and who knows what else.

Online retail is really cutting and gouging a lot of independent retailers--bookstores especially with their crazy-high running costs. Just think: in any given bookstore there are thousands of books--and everyone of them has been bought by the store in the hopes of selling them and making just a sliver of what the book actually costs. Plus, stores have to pay for the shipping and the return of books (if they do not sell); and if a store does have to return a book, it gets less than half of the cost in credit to apply to its next order: talk about diminishing returns.

King writes well and romantically about why bookstores are important and I agree with him--but please allow a few other points:

1. Bookstores provide a physical place to browse.
A good bookstore will surprise you. I often hear from customers, "I never even knew this book existed! " and then they happily buy it for their collection. This is something not even the smartest online databases can do (hell, sometimes not even seasoned professionals can show you the things you never knew existed but were happy they did).

2. Bookstores are places of public congregation.
Say you call a friend to meet for dinner--what better place to wait then a bookstore. If it's a date, even better as a bookstore is full of potentially fabulous conversation starters. (Actually, that should get a whole line of its own: Independent Bookstores--They're great for dates!). Every time I work at Diesel I see people meeting and chatting with strangers in the store about books. Not everyone, sure, but every time I work someone will say to another something along the lines of: "That's a _______ book! I ______ it."

3. Most independent bookstores are stocked with well-read and enthusiastic professionals.
These are the people who have meetings (had one last week) on how to better listen to and chat with patrons in order to help them find the books they want. I swear, go ask a bookseller who's been doing it a few years any sort of question: "I need a story about foxes, lost dogs, spies, and romance" and they will have a book ready for you. or will be able to find one (in the case above, I'd recommend Icelander by Justin Long. You can order it from Diesel!) :)

4. Very selfish here, but another important reason why indie bookstores are important: I like them very much, and would be terribly depressed were they to disappear. I think this is true for most people--sadly though, most don't realize how much they liked something until it is gone.

Connectivity is a poor metaphor for us

A syndetic structure--web-strong--
won't describe nor define what we'd like:
loves lost and momentum's murderous
impact on interstellar intimate bodies.

"The brain is amazing!" Blah, blah.
Can it create, conceptualize any-
thing that extra-exists external to it?
So far, no; but we can hope.

Meantime, let's be (wo)men (preferred term
yours) and yoke our desires to damn-well
whatever we want.
Let's exist for energy's sake.